Today is Tuesday, April 22, 2025, Earth Day. (Of course, there was no formal recognition of this day by the Chump administration at all today.) If you inwardly thought that the country of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was veering toward authoritarianism in the second term of Dump, you were right, since there is an online NPR article by Frank Langfitt entitled “Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism” that corroborates your dark suspicions.

Thus a survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority believe the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of autocracy.

“In the benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy on a scale from zero to (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy).” This is quite telling: “After President Trump’s election in November, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. Several weeks into Trump’s second term, that figure plummeted to 55.”

One of those professors, John Carey, a professor of government at Dartmouth and codirector of Bright Line Watch, said, “That’s a precipitous drop. There’s certainly consensus: We’re moving in the wrong direction.”

Carey said the decline between November and February was the biggest since Bright Line Watch began surveying scholars on threats to American democracy in 2017. In the survey, respondents consider 30 indicators of democratic performance, including whether the government interferes with the press, punishes political opponents, and whether the legislature and the judiciary can check executive authority.

Many scholars like Carey are deeply troubled by Dump’s attempts to expand executive power over his first several months in office. Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and coauthor of How Democracies Die said, “We’ve slid into some form of authoritarianism. It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy.”

When these scholars use the term “authoritarianism,” they aren’t referring to a system like China’s, a one-party state with no meaningful elections. Instead, they are referring to something called “competitive authoritarianism,” the kind scholars see in countries like Turkey and Hungary.

In such a system, a leader [like Chump] comes to power democratically and then erodes the system of checks and balances [like Dump]. Typically, the executive fills the civil service and key appointments – including the prosecutor’s office and judiciary – with loyalists [like Dump has]. He or she then attacks the media, universities, and nongovernmental organizations to blunt public criticism and tilt the electoral playing field in the ruling party’s favor.

Trump is using such autocratic tactics as having the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate all of the major broadcast outlets, except for fucking Rupert Murdock’s Fox “Nonnews” network, which is decidedly pro-Dump in their Fox News Channel. In these fascistic cases, the FCC can revoke local broadcast licenses, which could damage the networks financially.

Princeton’s Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who has spent years tracking Hungary, says this activity is eerily reminiscent of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban [a pal of this dear leader]. Orban took aim at the business model of Hungarian media, which heavily relied on state advertising.

One little hopeful sign here in the United States, despite its being led by a would-be autocrat right now, the scholars say, is the sagging popularity enjoyed by the Orange Turd which was not the case with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele who enjoyed overwhelming popular support among the populace which allowed them to change their countries’ political system.

For instance, Bukele, who met with Dump at the White House last week, has seen approval ratings over 90 percent and won reelection by a landslide last year. By contrast, a recent poll showed Dump’s approval rating falling to 43 percent, and he was reelected [sadly] with just under half of the popular vote. Also, millions of people – including myself – have risen up in massive protests across the country to oppose his illiberal policies.

Bright Line Watch, which conducted its survey in early February, said it plans to put out another in the field soon. Considering how unpopular Dump is right now, I’m sure that new survey will trend even further downward in Dump’s overall popularity rating.

So even though the situation appears dire right now in this country, there is a ray of hope contained in this reporting.

So I’ll be off for Los Angeles tomorrow. I’ll see you in early May.

And so it went!